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Hi all this is my first ever post. I've been playing by ear for a a good few years but have big gaps in my knowledge - scales being one. I've taken up flamenco and have some of the basics going and its most entertaining trying to improve. My question is (and I cant find answers for this on the net in general so I'm wondering if its a stupid question though I cant fathom why) is this; I am playing 3 chords Am, D, E back to Am with a basic rumba rhythm and am looking to practice/improvise scales around this. Is there a standard scale I should be practicing around and where could I find box diagrams for this. This probably sounds really dumb but I can live with the humiliation if someone can set me on the right path. Cheers
Well, you're playing in A minor (the chord progression there is i-V-iv, very common) so the easiest is to play over an A minor scale. See here for a chord diagram:
but it's pretty simple, there aren't any sharps or flats, it's just A B C D E F G You can leave that as you please, though, as long as it sounds good! One thing that occasionally works (usually over an E7 chord, before going back to Am) is to replace the G with a G#, for example playing the 1st fret on the G string rather than playing it open.
If you want more ideas for rumba in A minor, including some melodies you can play with in that key and some slightly more interesting chord progressions, there's a good lesson here:
with more on his website, items 3-5 here (you need to register but it's free. Yay!)
ORIGINAL: cadwallader But why does an E scale fit an A rooted pattern?
Well, the scale itself isn't an E scale - it's a collection of notes which can have any root, and the root determines its quality. So let's say I take the white notes on the keyboard - ABCDEFG - and play it with A as the root, I have the A minor scale. But the same set of notes with C played as the root is C Major. Similarly, those same notes can be looked at as E Phrygian, D Dorian, G Mixolydian, or a number of other scales.
Once you have a chord progression (in this case, a progression in the key of A minor), the chords determine which scales fit. It's a tricky business and I don't know all the details. Music theory's hard! But as a basic example, you wouldn't want to play an A Major scale over chords in A minor, it wouldn't fit.
By the way, note that the thing which the site is calling E "Spanish Gypsy" is also A Harmonic Minor (try it!). So you're not playing an E scale on top of an A pattern at all, you're just playing a variation on the minor theme.
I did see a video some weeks ago saying that the harmonic minor scale was important in Flamenco. I think it was New Learning Vision's flamenco package 2. They explained how eastern influences put a G sharp into the scale which made sense. This was the scale I was originally going to learn (harmonic minor) but in the next video NLV introduced without any explanation a flat note as well. I wrote to them to ask why before I commited to learning the scale and they never got back to me. I have been going round in circles ever since trying to find out what this new scale was and if I should bother learning the harmonic minor scale at all.
So in your opinion would it be safe to assume that a harmonic minor scale would be a good general scale to learn for flamenco?
No. Major and minor scales only have the root (obviously), second, fourth, and fifth notes in common. Now, since a triad is built on the root, third, and fifth, only the third is different between a major and minor chord. But between a major and minor scale, the third, sixth, and seventh are all different.
For example: A Major: A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G♯, A A minor: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A
You can alternate the notes that are not included in the chord. For example Am chord consists of notes A, C, E. You can simply play A minor scale (A B C D E F G), or you can make changes (ex. A Bb C D E F G, or A B C D# E F G, or A B C D E F# G, or A B C D E F G#). The same with Dm and E, What about changing the key to E major (E F# G# A B C# D#) or B major (E F# G# A# B C# D#) over E chord?
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You can leave that as you please, though, as long as it sounds good! One thing that occasionally works (usually over an E7 chord, before going back to Am) is to replace the G with a G#, for example playing the 1st fret on the G string rather than playing it open. 
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